Fragile
By Ross Forbes, Blockbuster.co.uk

There are two ways to tackle a horror film, you can either have the audience know about the monster/ghost from the beginning and watch as the hero realises that it is all true; or the audience and the hero can discover the truth together, which keeps the both guessing and in this case, is the journey that the audience and Calista Flockhart embark on in Fragile.

As the new night shift nurse in a closing hospital, Amy (Calista Flockhart) must leave the demons of her past behind in order to look after the children on the 1st floor. But with a string of unexplainable injuries, the children begin to whisper about a little girl called Charlotte that lives on the long abandoned 2nd floor. Furthermore, the children call her the ‘Mechanical girl’.

At first Amy dismisses the stories about Charlotte as a childhood ghost story but more and more, Amy is drawn into the children’s fears. But is Charlotte real? Or is it just Amy’s past?

With a stellar cast that includes the legendary Richard Roxburgh (Van Helsing & MI:2), playing Doctor Robert Marcus, a veteran doctor who tries to convince Amy that what she is seeing isn’t actually happening and it is all just a product of her hysteria. It is this realistic style and tone that pushes Fragile above other ghost stories.

Normally filmmakers fall into the trap of ‘creeping up’ the film by peppering it with creepy gardeners and nasty doctors that the filmmakers believe builds atmosphere; but often it doesn’t. What director Jaume Balagueró does is to build a believable environment, one that anyone of us could walk into, and fill it with characters that we could all relate to and recognise… then scares the hell out of us.

The film’s slow pace allows the audience to be absorbed into the world of Fragile without resorting to cheap tricks and jumps. Balaguero takes his time to weave the story together, allowing the audience to follow Amy on her journey to discover what really lives on the abandoned 2nd floor of the Hospital.

This title has been rated 521 times.